Volume 20, Number 118, December 2017/January 2018 Crupp’s Creation by Trina Brooks
Wilfred Crupp woke up one day and faced his own mortality.
He entered the kitchen yanking up his suspenders. He had finally stopped expecting to see Marjorie there. After two years his old brain was finally catching on, but Wilfred doubted his heart ever would.
The night the Buddhist
Mitten Tree shed its mitts,
the gloves, the scarves and
woollen toques, and my wits
the night when the sky forgo
to shed Hudson Bay’s confetti
the night that I was given
a cup of warm Nepalese
Masala Chai Tea
Volume 20, Number 117, October/November 2017 WINNER OF THE 2017 FICTION - THE JEANNIE PARSONS PRIZE Blueberry Picking by Patricia Kitteringham
The bright northern sunlight slipped through the dark curtains shielding my window and nudged me out of bed. Today’s the day, no time to linger it seemed to say. I leaped up, wide awake. The first day of blueberry season was here at last!
I grabbed my clothes off the floor and scrambled into them, then tiptoed across the room. At the doorway I paused, tilting my head, listening. Nothing but the soft sound of the radio drifting upstairs from the kitchen.
Volume 20, Number 117, October/November 2017 WINNER OF THE 2017 LEST WE FORGET - THE DARYN TSUJI/SHARRON ARKSEY PRIZE Never Forget. Make It Fly. by Sally Wylie
Being part of the Mynarski Memorial Lancaster restoration crew gave me the opportunity to hear the stories of men who flew the Lancaster in WWII or had relatives whose father, uncle, brother flew with them. Occasionally there were stories of women who flew the Lancaster as ferry pilots, or worked at the AV Roe Toronto assembly line where they were made in Canada.
It is 43 years since Andrew Allan died and I’m sure that, even then, most young Canadians responded to his death with “Who?”. But his death brought sadness mixed with a great deal of nostalgia to those of us who had once depended upon Andrew Allan for the greater part of our Canadian culture.
The 1940s. It was wartime. We were lonely and rationed and unsure, and for those of us with a taste for better entertainment there was very little theatre to see, especially out here in the West. Then what to our wondering ears should appear...!
“I love the old-time basin and pitcher,” I told Arlene, the principal’s wife.
For the sake of my bridegroom, Gavin, I wanted to make a good impression on Arlene and her
husband. The china pitcher, holding dried grasses, sat in its matching bowl on the table under the window.
“They came from Simcoe’s Antiques, which you passed on your way into town,” she told me. “I saw it in the window when we first moved here, and fell in love with it. Since then, I’ve seen similar sets at estate sales at much lower prices. Cy Simcoe really ripped me off.”
Volume 20, Number 114, April/May 2017 What Do You Do? by Fay Herridge
What do you do when there is no hope,
When the disease that you have iS incurable?
They can buy you some time with surgery and treatment -
But how much time
And at what cost.
The treatment itself can be hard on the system
And offers no real guarantee;
I’ve seen others go through it and I’m not so sure
That it’s the right course for me
Volume 20, Number 114, April/May 2017 War - A Memoir by Margot Maddison-MacFadyen
Author’s Note:
I am writing a series of stories about growing up in West Vancouver in the 60s and 70s. This is the first, and it has the earliest date. My own name - plus the names of my sisters, playmates and neighbours - has been changed. Otherwise, this is a true event, right down to the talking crow.
1964
I could stay in the garden under the giant maple tree all day, making elf houses out of moss, twigs and bright blue bachelor buttons, but my best friend Sky Anderson, a boy who is a year older than I am, wants to play.
“We missed you at Fred Cole’s funeral,” the lady standing outside our front door said, holding a pie in her hands. I had never met this woman nor Fred Cole, dead or alive.
I didn’t know what to say and finally stammered, “I am sorry, I didn’t know he died.”
We stand at the gate leading into the pool, a group of middleaged people decked out in all kinds of bathing suits, from the simple and sober to the fanciful and slightly cheeky. We are waiting for the music to begin. It’s time for my aquafit class and we’re a tough bunch of men and women.
